Britain to airlift chemical weapons detection kits to Syria

Britain is to airlift hundreds of chemical weapons detection and protection
kits to Syrian rebels as part of its first shipment of non-lethal equipment
since a EU arms embargo was relaxed to allow battlefield supplies.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on a surprise visit to an education centre in Damascus on March 20, 2013.Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Government sources said the equipment from Ministry of Defence stores would allow rebel fighters to detect and identify suspected chemical weapons as they battle against the regime.

The shipment was being assembled as senior US politicians heaped pressure on President Barack Obama to intervene in the Syrian civil war following a poison gas attack that killed at least 25 on Tuesday.

David Cameron told the House of Commons that a feeble international reaction was allowing Syria to fall into a Bosnia-style spiral of death.

Bashar al-Assad speaking with Syrian women during a surprise visit in Damascus

Syria’s regime and its opposition opponents have traded accusations of deploying chemical weapons in the town of Khan al-Assad, near Aleppo. Bashar al-Jafaari, Syria’s ambassador to the UN demanded a “specialised, independent and neutral mission” set-up by Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General, to investigated the incident. The rebel Syrian National Coalition has also demanded an international inquiry.

British officials see the provision of chemical weapons suits, equipment that monitors the air and analysis sets as a key need for the opposition, officials said. Alongside body armour and armoured vehicles, the suits will be part of the first shipment sent within weeks via Turkey to the front line.

“Protective equipment in the MoD stores is very effective for activists engaged against the regime on the ground and if it is known that kits are deployed we judge it less likely that the regime would use it,” said an official involved in the planning. “But if there are chemicals used it will allow the rebels to detect it accurately and the world to react.”

Mr Cameron said the chemical weapons threat was one reason to remove the embargo on the rebels altogether. “I felt sitting round the European Council chamber there was a slight similarity between some of the arguments that were being made about not putting more weapons into Syria that seemed to me to be very familiar to the discussions we had about Bosnia and the appalling events that followed,” he said.

Robert Ford, the US Syrian envoy, said America so far had “no evidence to substantiate” claims that chemical weapons had been used and Mr Obama’s “red line” crossed.

However the administration shared widespread concerns that the pink-white smoke and chlorine smell reported by victims who were struggling to breathe and foaming at the mouth was a chemical material.

The alleged use of chemical weapons prompted senior senators from both parties in Washington to heap pressure on President Barack Obama to intervene.

Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate armed services committee, called for strikes on the Assad regime’s military facilities and for a no-fly zone to be imposed over the country.

“There should be the next ratcheting up of military effort, and that would include going after some of Syria’s air defences,” Mr Levin told Foreign Policy magazine.

John McCain and Lindsey Graham, two Republican senators, reiterated their long-standing demand for the US to step in, with Mr Graham even suggesting the US put “boots on the ground”.

In an effort to show his regime’s resiliance, President Assad was pictured at a reception for a Damascus fine arts centre.

King Abdullah II, the Jordanian monarch warned that President Assad’s regime was doomed and that an Islamic fundamentalist state was likely to emerge on his borders.

“The most worrying factors in the Syrian conflict are the issues of chemical weapons, the steady flow or sudden surge in refugees and a jihadist state emerging out of the conflict,” the king said.

The cost of the conflict already exceed half a billion dollars and were rising rapidly.

An estimated 500,000 Syrian refugees – about nine per cent of Jordan’s population of 6 million, had crossed into Jordan in the last 12 months.